On Tue, 2004-11-09 at 10:18, jhrothjr wrote:
> > But what you're talking about to me sounds like something different. It
> > sounds like trying to build a supply monopoly. I'd expect this to be
> > just as sub-optimal as any other monopoly.
>
> In any form of competitive environment,
> monopolies can't exist unless there is
> either some form of government (or other)
> coercion guaranteeing them, or if there
> is a sufficiently high economic barrier
> to the entry of a new firm.
Yes. It sounded to me that Stede was after something like either the
former (through standard union laws) or the latter (through just getting
all the XP developers together).
> > Ok, here's where I come back on topic.
> >
> > It seems to me that XP, in that it promotes team cohesion already serves
> > some of the power-balancing functions of a union. I'd love to hear
> > others' opinions, but in my experience the XP teams I've worked closely
> > with were much better at making their opinions heard to management, and
> > would be much more likely to actively support a team member in
> > situations where management was being unfair to an employee.
>
> This is basically true *if* you're internal,
> and you have relatively sane management.
> Much of what we hear on the list does not
> sound like reasonably sane management to me.
Well, I have yet to see an XP team working in a pretty insane
environment, so I don't have data on that end of the spectrum. But my
experience so far is that XP teams are better than traditional teams at
resisting and, more importantly, reforming management craziness than
non-XP teams, regardless of the level of madness. That's not to say that
the experience of XP teams in crazy environments would be good, only
that it would be better than it would be otherwise.
And experience aside, the theory seems plausible to me. Not only does a
more cohesive team mean more collective action, but XP also tightens
feedback loops. And a lot of management insanity strikes me as
reasonable but wrong behavior amplified by slow or broken feedback
loops.
William
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